Shadows in the Twilight

5

Joel sometimes broke a cup or a dish when he was washing up after he and Samuel had eaten a meal.

But that was nothing compared with what Ludde broke.

Ludde was the owner of the bar. But he didn’t mix with his customers: instead, he spent his time at the sink. He was small and fat, and his hands were always red and swollen because of the washing-up water.

There was a notice on the door leading into the kitchen at the rear of the bar saying that unauthorised persons were not permitted entry, but that didn’t apply to Joel because Sara worked there. Joel didn’t often use that door. It was always chaotic and noisy in the kitchen. Besides, he didn’t like Sara and the other waitresses patting him on the head. Treating him almost as if he were Sara’s own boy.

He didn’t like being a Nearly Boy. And even if Sara was nice and Samuel was always in a good mood when he was together with her, Joel refused to pretend that Sara was his mother. His mum was called Jenny, and would always be called Jenny. Even if he never met her again for the rest of his life, he would never have another mum.

But he did sometimes go in through the forbidden door. And today he had an important errand. He had to find a man for Gertrud.

When he entered the kitchen, it was even more chaotic than usual. Ludde was bent over the sink, washing up like a madman. There was a rattling and clinking and clattering in the frothy water from glasses, cups, dishes and cutlery.

It was mostly glasses, as this was a bar after all, and everybody was drinking beer. But the beer drinkers occasionally grew hungry and wanted food. Ludde did the cooking and the washing up at the same time. Only one dish was served in the bar, and it was always known as Ludde’s Beef Stew. Sara had told Joel that Ludde had owned the bar for over twenty years, and he had served the same stew all that time. Joel used to study the big pot standing on the stove, and imagined it cooking for twenty years. Ludde had occasionally added some new bits of meat, and stirred the thick, brown gravy; but essentially it was the same dish that had been standing on the stove for twenty years. Once, when Joel was hungry, Sara had served him up a plate of Ludde’s Beef Stew. Joel had eaten it, and thought how he had eaten something that had been simmering on that stove since before he was born.

Now, when Joel entered the kitchen, Ludde was bent over the sink as usual.

‘Joel!’ he shouted. ‘You can’t imagine how pleased we all were to hear that you hadn’t been injured.’

‘No doubt it was a miracle,’ said Joel evasively.

Just then Sara came in through the swing doors carrying a tray. It was full of empty bottles and glasses, overflowing ash trays and sticky plates. Joel wondered if he would have been able to lift the tray.

Sara was strong. Joel had once watched her heave a sack of coal onto her shoulder. His dad Samuel was strong, but Joel wondered if Sara was even stronger.

All the waitresses working in the bar were strong, and they all looked similar. Big and fat and sweaty. And they were all dressed the same: black skirts and white blouses. Once Joel had been in the kitchen and they had come in through the swing doors one after another, and it seemed to him that they looked like animals. Black and white waitress-elephants marching in from the beery jungle...

Sara put the tray down with a bang, and immediately, Ludde started filling his sink with more plates and glasses. A dish and a glass fell off the tray and smashed as they hit the floor.

Joel hardly dare look in case he burst out laughing. There were always piles of broken china and glass round Ludde’s feet. To avoid cutting his feet, he wore black overshoes. He didn’t have shoes inside the overshoes, though, but slippers. As Joel wasn’t really sure if Ludde minded people laughing at him, he avoided looking at the floor. Instead, he screwed up his eyes and peered sideways at the scene. He wouldn’t need to laugh if he did that.

Sara had told Joel that all the money Ludde earned by selling beer and beef stew was spent on buying new crockery and glasses. Once Sara and the other waitresses had been paid, and Nyberg the bouncer as well, and all the beer and the stew bills had been settled, Ludde only had enough money left over to buy new crockery and glasses.

And it went on like that, year after year. And all the time the pot of stew clucked and spluttered on the stove.

‘Hello, Joel,’ said Sara with a smile, wiping the sweat from her brow.

Please don’t hug me, Joel thought. I don’t want to be hugged.

‘Have you come to visit me?’ said Sara, pulling him closer and giving him a hug. Joel tried to resist, but it was impossible. Sara was as strong as a weightlifter.

She could have toured the fairgrounds in a sideshow as Sara the Strong.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘Would you like something to eat?’

‘No thank you,’ said Joel. ‘I only called in to say hello.’

He didn’t really know how to go about finding a man for Gertrud, nor did he know if Sara would be able to help him. That’s why he answered as he did.

As he ran down the hill from Simon Windstorm’s house, he’d tried to gather his thoughts on what he knew about how grown-ups came to meet one another. He found it difficult to understand anything to do with love. To be honest, he had a pretty good idea of what was involved. At school, behind the bicycle sheds, Otto had once condescended to explain to Joel and some other boys how children were made. Joel had listened carefully, so as not to miss a single word. At first he thought that Otto must be out of his mind. Could that really be what happened? Surely not? How was it really done?

Joel had been sensible enough not to ask any questions, but for a long time he doubted if Otto had been telling the truth. Later, when he’d heard the same story from others, he had realised that it must presumably be right, strange though it might seem. Strange and complicated. He’d spent a lot of time wondering how there could possibly be so many children around when the whole business seemed to be so complicated.

So Joel knew quite a lot. And he knew how you went about kissing, even if he hadn’t yet tried it on a girl, only on his own reflection in the mirror.

But the big question was: how do grown-ups get to meet one another?

He knew some of the answer. You could go to the dance at the Community Centre on Saturday night, when Kringström’s orchestra was playing. That’s where people met. And he’d read in books about other ways in which people could meet. In fairy tales princes climbed up long ropes to meet princesses who were locked in high towers.

But in the little town he lived in the only towers were the church steeple and the red tower at the fire station where the firemen used to hang up their hose pipes to dry. Joel found it hard to imagine Gertrud sitting at the top of the fire brigade tower without a nose.

But there were other ways in which grown-ups could meet. Inmost of the books he read there were always some chapters describing how people met and eventually got married. But there was never anything about what Otto had described behind the bicycle sheds. Joel assumed that was because it was so boring to write about it.

You could meet in the wreckage of a train that had fallen into a ravine. You could rescue a girl who had fallen into freezing water when the ice broke, and later marry her. You could wear a black mask and kidnap a girl.

There were lots of ways. But by the time Joel had come to the bottom of the hill and paused to regain his breath before entering the back door of the bar, he had decided that the best place for Gertrud to meet the man he hadn’t yet found for her was probably the Community Centre.

Joel sat down on a chair in the corner where he was least in the way. Sara had vanished through the swing doors again, carrying a tray full of beer bottles. He tried to think up a good way of getting Sara to help him, without her realising it. If he could get her to tell him about the men sitting out there in the bar, which ones were unmarried and which ones were nice, he’d be able to choose the one he thought would be most suitable for Gertrud.

But what characteristics would be most suitable for Gertrud?

What kind of man would she most like to have?

It wasn’t easy to think in the kitchen, with Ludde creating havoc at the sink all the time. And Sara and the other waitresses running in and out, emptying trays and loading them up again with new bottles and glasses.

‘I’ll soon be coming for a sit down,’ said Sara, before disappearing with her tray.

The other two waitresses, Karin and Hilda, said the same thing.

‘We’ll soon be coming for a sit down and a rest.’

Joel didn’t say anything. He was regretting not having waited a bit longer before coming to the bar. He ought to have thought through what kind of man Gertrud would want first. Then he should have worked out how Sara could be tricked into helping him.

This was typical of Joel — he often forgot to think before starting to do something.

And this was the result. Just then Ludde dropped another glass that shattered on the checked tile floor.

‘Now!’ exclaimed Sara, throwing down her tray and slumping onto a chair. ‘Time for a rest!’

She poured herself a cup of coffee, put a lump of sugar in her mouth, and started slurping. Then she looked up at Joel, and smiled.

‘I’m so pleased,’ she said. ‘So pleased that nothing happened to you. You wouldn’t believe how much the blokes out there are talking about the accident. You’ve given them something to talk about. Everybody knows who Joel Gustafson is now.’

Joel couldn’t make up his mind if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Perhaps in future people would turn round in the street to look at him and think: there goes that Joel Gustafson who was run over by the Ljusdal bus without suffering a single scratch.

Maybe they would even give him a nickname. Like Mr Under the horse dealer, who was only ever referred to as Neighing Ned.

Or Hugo, who was an electrician and the best player in the local ice-hockey team.

How many people knew that his name was Hugo when everybody called him Snotty?

The world is full of nicknames, Joel thought. Snotty and Fleabag-Frankie and Paintpot-Percy, who was a painter and decorator. There was a chimney sweep known to everybody as Jim even though his real name was Anders. Not to mention the baker everybody called Bluebottle, because he had a front tooth missing and made a buzzing sound when he talked. Or the stonemason known as Buggery, because that was more or less all he ever said. Or the vicar whose name was Nikodemus but was called Knickers by those who knew him. But most people just said Vicar. Then there was a skier known as Skater-Sammy, and a drayman nicknamed Pop. But oddest of all was surely the carpenter called Johanson who was known to everybody as The Welder.

What would Joel’s nickname be?

Joel Ljusdal Gustafson?

Lucky Joel?

Miracle Gustafson?

Joel frowned, and pulled a face at the very thought.

That was the worst thing about nicknames — it was always somebody else who invented them.

You ought to be able to choose your own nickname.

‘What are you pulling a face at?’ asked Sara, with a laugh.

‘Nothing,’ said Joel.

‘It was nice of you to come and visit me.’

‘I wanted to ask you something,’ said Joel, without knowing what he wanted to ask her about.

Sara nodded, and looked at him.

Just then the swing doors were flung open and Karin came storming into the kitchen. She was red in the face with anger.

‘I can’t make head nor tail of that lot,’ she said. ‘Now two of them have started thumping each other.’

Ludde broke off his washing up and turned to look at her.

‘What’s Nyberg doing about it?’ he asked. ‘Why doesn’t he throw them out?’

‘He tried,’ said Karin. ‘But now he’s on the floor with the other two on top of him.’

Before they knew where they were, everybody was rushing towards the swing doors. Joel had stood up and followed Sara, but when she got as far as the doors she turned round and said sternly:

‘You stay here.’

Joel was angry at not being allowed to go with them. But at the same time, he had to admit that he was a bit scared.

He peered cautiously through the crack in the doors.

Tables and chairs were overturned all over the floor. Nyberg the bouncer was just crawling out from underneath a mass of arms and legs. He was rubbing his nose and looking furious. Sara had taken hold of one of the drunks, and was shaking him as if he were a little boy. Ludde was waving his red hands about and shouting something Joel couldn’t make out.

He wasn’t at all sure who had been fighting.

On the other hand, he noticed two men sitting calmly at a table, apparently completely unconcerned by what had been going on. They were drinking Pilsner, both leaning forward with heads close together, and talking away. One of them was fair-haired. It struck Joel that he looked very like the blond boy depicted on tubes of one of Sweden’s favourite delicacies, Kalle’s Caviar. (It wasn’t the expensive, ‘real’ caviar, but what you might call the poor man’s caviar — fish roe, delicious with your breakfast toast.) The man was the spitting image of Kalle, despite the fact that he was probably three times as old. His friend had dark hair, combed in Elvis Presley style.

They are the ones, Joel thought.

One of them could become Gertrud’s husband!

He would have liked to continue spying on them through the crack in the doors, but Ludde and Sara were striding back towards the kitchen again. Bouncer Nyberg had thrown out the two troublemakers through the big front door. Karin and Hilda were busy clearing up after the fight.

Joel scurried back to his chair.

Ludde returned to the sink, and started by dropping a plate that smashed on the floor. Sara flopped down on her chair, produced a handkerchief from her cleavage and mopped her face.

‘What happened?’ asked Joel, trying to give the impression that he’d been sitting on his chair all the time.

Sara leaned forward and whispered:

‘I saw you peeping out through the doors.’

Joel blushed. He felt as if he’d turned red all the way from his stomach up to his forehead.

His first reaction was to deny that he’d been looking.

But he changed his mind immediately. He’d only have blushed even more.

‘It wasn’t all that serious,’ said Sara. ‘When they’ve cooled down they’ll be as meek as lambs again.’

‘Why did they start fighting?’ Joel wondered. He didn’t like the fact that Sara had caught him out.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Sara with a shrug. ‘Have you?’

The latter question was directed at Karin, who had just come in through the swing doors with a shovel in her hand.

‘Do I have any idea about what?’ asked Karin.

‘Why they were fighting?’

Karin emptied her shovel into a bin standing between the stove and the sink where Ludde was splashing about with his plates and glasses.

‘It was something to do with a girl,’ said Karin. ‘Blokes only fight if there’s a girl involved, don’t they?’

Joel listened with his eyes open wide.

‘I think they’re both sweet on the same girl,’ said Karin. ‘That Anneli who works in the shoe shop.’

‘Is she anything to fight over?’ wondered Hilda, who had joined them in the kitchen.

She turned to look at Joel.

‘Or what do you think, Joel?’ she asked. ‘Surely a shop assistant in a shoe shop isn’t worth fighting over?’

All the waitresses laughed, and Ludde dropped another glass on the floor.

Joel could feel himself blushing again. He thought he would have to say something that showed he’d understood what they were getting at.

‘I shall never fight over anybody who sells shoes,’ he said. ‘Never.’

They all laughed again, and Hilda came up to pat his head. Joel tried to shrink away, but she left her hand there and ruffled his hair.

‘He’s as nice as Rolf and David,’ she said. ‘The girls who get them can consider themselves lucky.’

Then she sat down at the table alongside Sara and Karin. Joel listened to what they said. He had realised that it was sometimes important to hear what grown-ups were saying. They sometimes said things you could learn something from. Not very often. But sometimes. Such as now.

It dawned on Joel that they were talking about the two young men sitting at a table by themselves and paying no attention at all to the violent fight taking place.

‘If only I were a bit younger,’ sighed Hilda as she massaged her tired feet.

‘I wish they’d been my sons,’ said Karin.

Sara said nothing. But she nodded in agreement. All the time Ludde was clattering away at the sink.

Joel stood up and tried to sneak out of the door without being seen.

He didn’t see the bucket standing next to his chair, and stumbled over it. He fell headlong and ended up in the middle of the three waitresses.

‘A boy’s paying us a flying visit,’ said Hilda with a laugh.

Joel could feel that he was blushing again.

He had blushed more today than he’d ever done before.

Karin stood up, took her tray and vanished through the swing doors again.

Hilda went to the storeroom and began carrying in new crates of beer.

‘What was it you were going to ask me about?’ Sara wondered.

‘Does one of them look like the caviar tube?’ asked Joel.

Sara looked at him in astonishment.

‘What do you mean? The caviar tube? Who’s supposed to look like a caviar tube?’

‘David or Rolf? Like the boy on the caviar tube?’

Then the penny dropped. She burst out laughing and slapped her knee.

‘You must be referring to David,’ she said. ‘You’re right, he does look like the lad with the mop of blond hair on the caviar tube.’

‘I just wondered,’ said Joel. ‘I must be off. ’Bye!’

And he hurried out of the door before Sara had time to ask him anything else.

It was already starting to get dark outside. Joel raised the collar of his jacket and ran round the corner to check the time on the church clock.

Five o’clock already!

He had better hurry up and put the potatoes on. Samuel was usually home by six at the latest. The potatoes had to be ready by then.

David and Rolf would have to wait. He was in a hurry...

It was evening. Joel could hear Samuel in the room next door listening to the radio. Joel was sitting like a tailor on his bed, writing up the diary he had taken from the Celestine’s showcase.

He wasn’t actually writing, in fact. He’d already finished.

‘There was trouble at the bar today...’

That’s as far as he’d got. He’d had the feeling that it was silly, keeping a diary. Or logbook, as he used to call the little book with a black cover. He started reading it instead. He had glued the edges of some pages and drawn a red stamp on them, saying that what was written there had to be kept secret for a year. But he hadn’t paid any attention to that. Declaring part of your own diary secret was childish and not something anybody who would soon be twelve could indulge in.

TSFTDTHFAS, it said on the cover.

‘The Search for the Dog That Headed for a Star.’

His secret society.

He read bits here and there in the book and thought that all he had written about seemed to have happened a very long time ago. In fact, it was only just over six months ago. Barely even that.

He didn’t like the idea of time passing so quickly. Of everything changing so quickly. Not least himself. He would really prefer everything to stay the same. You ought to be able to pick out a day when everything had gone well and say: It’s always going to be like this!

But that wasn’t possible! Why wasn’t it possible?

Joel sighed and dropped the diary on the bed in front of him.

Perhaps that was the way you became a grown-up? By realising that there was no such thing as a day that could never be changed?

Perhaps that’s why so many grown-ups looked so tired and miserable? Because they knew that’s the way things are?

He jumped impatiently off the bed and lay stretched out on the floor, looking at the maps he had cut up. He tried to think a bit more about the geography game. But that wasn’t much fun either. Then he lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. He traced the outlines of the damp patches with his eyes.

He suddenly felt as if he were lying underneath the bus again.

Just think if he’d died!

He wouldn’t have been able to smell the awful stench in Simon Windstorm’s house any more. Or to sit with his dad, Samuel, at the kitchen table and sail the seven seas.

He would never have fallen asleep again, never woken up.

He didn’t like those thoughts. They were scurrying around in his head like ants. He sat up and thought he ought to go to bed now.

What he would have liked to do most of all would have been to give up all thoughts of doing a good deed. Gertrud could find herself a man without his help, if she wanted one. She could brick herself into the church tower and wait for somebody to climb up to her...

Curse that miracle, he thought.

In any case, surely it should be Eklund who ought to do a good deed?

He was the one who caused it all, and was lucky enough not to have killed a human being with his bus.

But deep down, Joel knew that he was the one who would have to do a good deed. So he might as well get it over with as soon as possible.

He clambered back onto his bed and started writing in his diary:

‘Today I, Joel Gustafson, who don’t yet have a nickname, have decided that Gertrud must have a man. Finding one for her will be my good deed in return for the Miracle. I have chosen David or Rolf to become her husband. All I have to do now is to establish which one of them is most suitable.’

He read through what he had written. That would do. It was more than enough.

‘Shouldn’t you be going to bed now, Joel?’ shouted Samuel from his room. Joel could hear that he had adjusted the radio so that there was no programme, only static. His dad used to do that when he wanted to listen to the sea.

‘In a minute,’ Joel shouted in reply. ‘I’ve started.’

Although the town they lived in was very small, he had never seen David and Rolf before. He didn’t know their surnames, where they lived or what their work was.

What would he do if they lived a hundred miles away?

I’ll have to start tomorrow, he thought. I’ll ask Otto. He knows everybody’s name.

He went to the kitchen and replaced the diary in the Celestine’s showcase. Then he got undressed, brushed his teeth and settled down in bed.

At first it was so cold that he had to tense every muscle in his body. But it gradually grew warmer under the covers.

‘I’m in bed now,’ he shouted to Samuel.

His dad came shuffling into Joel’s room in his slippers.

‘Dad,’ said Joel, ‘have you ever had a nickname?’

Samuel looked at him in surprise.

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘I just wondered.’

Samuel shook his head.

‘When I was a sailor I suppose there were a few shipmates who called me Sam,’ he said. ‘But you can hardly call that a nickname.’

‘Has Mum got a nickname?’ Joel asked.

He was surprised by the question. It just came tumbling out of its own accord.

Samuel looked serious.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She was called Jenny. Nothing else.’

Joel sat bolt upright.

‘That’s wrong,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Samuel in surprise.

‘It’s not “she was called Jenny”,’ he said. ‘She is called Jenny.’

Samuel nodded slowly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She is called Jenny. You’re right. Go to sleep now.’

Samuel stroked him lightly over the cheek, and went back to his own room, then into the kitchen. He left the kitchen door ajar. A narrow strip of light shone onto Joel’s bed.

Joel always used to lie and contemplate that strip of light before going to sleep.

He could hear Samuel pouring warm water into the washbasin.

It was a procedure that never changed. It was the same night after night, for as long as Joel could remember.

He could feel his eyelids growing heavy.

The last thought he had before falling asleep was that he wasn’t looking forward to asking Otto about David’s and Rolf’s surnames. Or where they lived.

You should always steer well clear of Otto. He teased and bullied everybody, and did stupid things.

But who else could he ask?

He rolled over to face the wall, and curled up under the covers.

The next day he would start his hunt for the Caviar Man and his friend.